This is funny, but mostly in that "Ha ha! I'm not gonna die, so I feel like laughing uncontrollably!" sort of way.

The one sorta genuinely funny thing about it though is that one passenger, interviewed after the plane safely landed, was quoted as saying "I can't think of anything worse than being told your plane's about to crash."

I have one: Your plane actually crashing.

So here's a great question posed by Gawker: Who knew that airliners had pre-recorded messages for this kind of stuff? I've been on planes where it seemed like the end was near - like the flight back to Chicago from Aruba, after my honeymoon a few years ago, and always a crew member got on the horn and - sometimes nervously - told everyone it was all good. And we'd survive. I think if I'm on a plane and about to eat it, I want to hear a human freaking out just like I'd be.

I'm already a semi-nervous flier, not so much 'cause I doubt the mechanical ability of planes. I worked on 'em in college. And depending on which way the wind is blowing, that experience makes me either slightly more or much less confident in airline safety. We worked on Navy fighter jets in my college job. And sometimes to mess with the pilots' heads, some of the more veteran techs used to place random Band-aids on different parts of the wings or fuselages. When the pilots came to retrieve their jets, they'd see these bandages intended for flesh and reasonably freak out and ask things like "Um, should that be there? Don't you guys have rivets or something for this stuff?" Then the old techs with the twisted humor would let them in on the joke. At least I think it was a joke.

No, my nervousness stems more from not knowing who the other folks on the plane are and whether or not the crew is competent. Hey, if a flight attendant can lose it and slide down the emergency shoot when the plane is parked and at the terminal, what makes you think the next fed up flight attendant won't do that mid-flight?

Anyway, if this happened to me, it would be at least a year if ever before I got on a plane again. I think I'd try to take a bus even for inter-continental flights, or a submarine, or cruise ship or something.

I'm off today, continuing a day-and-a-half anniversary celebration with Mrs. B. In another post - perhpas over the weekend - I'll share how we marked five years hitched.

But here's some food for thought: My column in today's Miami Herald is about city officials in Hollywood, FL, pressuring a beachfront hotel owner to tone down the bright pink color he recently painted the place. It's a historic little boutique place, with a cool tiki bar. Jimmy Hoffa used to vacation there. Neat spot. But it's realllllllly bright now. Some neighbors and city officials have decided they hate the new color. They believe it's gawdy and takes away from the $100 million beachfront rehab effort the city has engaged in over the past few years. Some even say the bright pink building feeds the blight and decay the city's trying to combat.

Here's the catch: The city approved the color, when the hotel owner applied for a permit to paint and change the look back in December. Now the city doesn't like the color. Not only that, but some city officials are so appalled by the look of the place that they sprang into near-instant action and coralled a group of college architecture students to develop an official city color palette.

Here's the conundrum: Two miles away from this pink hotel are buildings that are visibly decaying. There are hookers painted more brightly than the hotel strolling up and down a major street, and there are residents who've been griping about both for decades. Their question and mine? Why is the city so hell-bent on "quieting" the color of the pink place, but not showing the same apparent urgency with a nearby residential area that's been dealing with worse than pink paint for decades?

Seriously, since I was a kid and even with the religious and spiritual indoctrinations I received, I've always found it difficult to believe that humans on earth are it for intelligent life in the universe.

I even once drew the ire of a visiting minister who was delivering a sermon at my dad's church when I was a kid, 'cause I after the service I asked him what he thought Jesus's name and appearance might be on Jupiter.

He got flustered. I thought it was a fair question.

It just seems like a waste of space if there aren't other planets out there with their own intelligent creatures, economies, vehicles, stupid politicians, religious charlatans leaders, lazy relatives, etc.

The important thing though is that I haven't the slightest bit of evidence to support any of this. And that leads me to my point:

Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, supposedly the smartest person on Earth, has a new Discovery Channel documentary coming out about space in which he warns that there are probably aliens out there and if we ever made contact with them the encounter would be more like Independence Day than E.T.

Hawking not only speculates that there are hater aliens out there who can't handle just how cool we are on Earth and that they might want to eat us, he also says we'd freak out if we saw how advanced alien technology is, and that aliens might look something like this - alien herbavores and alien predators, respectively (courtesty of Discovery Channel):

Now, I'm a big fan of what work of Hawking's that I understand. He's also been great on The Simpsons. But seriously, the smartest people on earth are now guessing at what man-eating aliens might look like?

Anyway, even if you believe Hawking's great imagination, he fails to explain one thing: what reason do we have to think that aliens are smarter than us or have better technology than us? Really, how does he not know that other planets are populated by billions of guys from Deliverance? Maybe on Planet X, the aliens are dumb as dirt and named Cletus D. CousinKisser. Maybe their vehicles are all wagons with square wheels.

I still believe in aliens, but till I see proof to the contrary, I'm assuming we're smarter than them.

Just finished watching 24, 1 a.m. - 2 a.m., and I remain confused about something: How did charatcer Dana Walsh get a job at a federal counter-terrorism unit, with a criminal background as an armed robber (at least, I think it was armed robber)? I know a guy who couldn't get a gig at McDonald's 'cause he had a terrible driving history with a gut-load of unpaid tickets. Not like he was gonna be driving through the grill area at McD's. Of all the spy stuff that sometimes comes across as incredulous (though enough of it is scary enough to make you ponder) on this show, her making it through the background check process is the least believable thing to me.

I was happy for Sandra Bullock that she won the Oscar for "best actress" Sunday night. I thought The Blind Side was touching. But I can't lie. I'm still slightly put off by yet another movie about a needy, poor black kid, saved in the nick of time when a white family swoops in. Why does this bother me? It's not the acts of kindness. I laud them. I laud those acts from the Touhy family, portrayed in the film, and from any other family that helps a kid in need. My problem is really me - my paranoia that certain tiny-minded folks will read into the Touhy's good deeds and see a perpetuation of the stereotype of needy, helpless black folks. Shoot, my folks over the years have taken in a dozen ragamuffins of all stripes, particularly struggling younger black folks. And no one's making any movies about the Burnetts. I recommended to my mom they call the movie "The Dark Side" if it ever got made. Thought I was being clever. But she pointed out I could end up getting sued by George Lucas for swiping one of his Star Wars themes.

And speaking of Oscars, I wonder if Elinor Burkett, who pulled a Kanye West, by bum rushing the stage during Roger Ross Williams' acceptance speech will draw several days worth of condemnations for the act. There were people on Twitter calling for West's man parts to be lopped off when he interrupted singer Taylor Swift at an MTV awards ceremony a few months ago. I'm thinking the buzz about Burkett is gonna fade quickly. The difference between her and Man-West is he had a public track record of speaking out of turn. Plus, Taylor Swift is a kid, and thus more sympathetic than Williams, a grown man who could have put Burkett in a headlock till he was done saying thank you.

I believe in Karma. So before reading further, set aside your opinions on homosexuality and affirmative action - as in whether you believe either is right or wrong or good or bad or whatever. Now, with a level mind, tell me if you disagree that Karma has bitten California State Sen. Roy Ashburn (R-Sacramento), who so vehemently spoke out against gay rights legislation in his state, but was caught last week driving drunk on his way home with a male hookerish guy from a gay bar. In that incident, Ashburn, who on Monday came out as gay, was exposed as a hypocrite. Ashburn's admission that he is gay makes him just as bad as those Baby Boomer beneficiaries of affirmative action legislation, who later got on soapboxes and poked fun of and placed guilt trips on people younger than them who stood to benefit from the same legislation. Again, this isn't a con/pro judgment of AA, any more than it is of Ashburn's lifestyle. It's a judgment against phonies. We can talk lifestyle in another post ;-)

Walt Baker is the latest example of a sufferer of Hoof-in-Mouth disease, who didn't quite get the problem with his most recent display of symptoms. Baker, was CEO of the Tennessee Hospitality Association, till he was fired on Monday, following an uproar over an email he circulated several days ago that compared First Lady Michelle Obama's looks to those of Cheetah, Tarzan's chimpanzee companion. Baker's initial reaction wasn't "Sorry for my tasteless attempt at a joke." It was This email was sent to me. I simply forwarded it!, followed by I forwarded it from a personal email account, not from work!, followed by It didn't occur to me that there might be a racist interpretation of the email. I meant it as political commentary! (so what do her looks have to do with her/her husband's politics?), followed by I'm sorry some people were offended by my joke! (never mind the content of the joke), followed by Oops!, followed by Guess I'll be cleaning out my desk now!

I don't feel any sympathy for Baker, but the most honest, stand-up thing he could have done (or what he should have done if he had good PR people) would have been to issue an immediate statement saying "Look, I forwarded that email 'cause I thought it was funny. I know it was tasteless. And that's why I only sent it to a few people. The sentiment in the email was mean-spirited, and arguably racist, two attitudes I'd say I've never had, though I know my actions with this email say otherwise. So I'm sorry. I'm first sorry for getting caught, 'cause I admit if I hadn't gotten caught I'd have never felt sorry. But now that I am caught the uproar over this incident is giving me pause to examine my own heart and sense of humor. I'll be seeking counseling from my minister. And I'll be meeting with a diverse set of community leaders to discuss ways I might open my mind and better learn the common sense differences between humor and poor taste." No way that statement was gonna happen. Still...

Friends have been asking me what was the most disturbing thing I saw in Haiti a couple weeks ago. Answer? Classism. It's a given that all the death and destruction were horrible. Difficult stuff to describe and it bothered me to see it all day everyday, especially knowing that folks in Port-au-Prince would have to live in it for years to come. But what bothered me most was the blatant classism on display. Yeah we have it in the U.S. too. But here it's often tied in with race or skin color...though not always. It couldn't be blamed on skin color in Haiti, just status. My last day in the city, the driver who took me to the airport wasn't my regular guy. This driver was from Petionville, a nice (in some parts downright fancy) neighborhood in the hills above Port-au-Prince. As we drove through destroyed poor 'hoods on the way to the airport, we passed an old guy limping with a cane, dressed in rags, walking his dog through a pile of garbage, looking for scraps. My driver honked at them, gestured wildly for them to get out of the way, cursed at the pair, though there was plenty of room for us to get by without all the drama, and then turned to me with a dumb grin and said "Eh, I almost mixed them up, boss! They look to me like two dogs, instead of one." He thought he was funny. I won't be hiring that driver when I go back.

Levi Johnston, former almost son-in-law to Sarah & Todd Palin and father of their only grandchild, exposed his junk for Playgirl magazine.

Playgirl magazine still exists.

In her new book, Going Rouge Rogue, Sarah Palin bit the hands that fed her. And relax, Palin fans. I'm neither bashing the GOP or hockey moms. You should know this already. But just in case, "Bit the hand" is just a figure of speech, not a comparison to a dog or any other mammal large enough to hold a hockey stick or wear lipstick. Anywho, setting aside your political leanings, you have to believe that any reining in done by McCain staffers during last fall's presidential election was done to help McCain - and therefore Palin - win the White House. To bash those staffers now over things like diet advice, wardrobe, Saturday Night Live, and media interviews is silly.

The first missing kid whose picture was posted on the side of a milk carton is still missing 30 years later. Not making fun. It's a tragedy. But have you ever taken even 10 seconds to look closely at one of those milk carton pics and then kept an eye out for the kid? Me either. And I used to drink a lot of milk.

In the "It was bound to happen" category: A young athlete with big potential did not drop out of college to turn professional. Nope, Jeremy Tyler broke a record. He dropped out of high school. That's right, Tyler, a 6'11" basketball phenom, quit San Diego High School after his junior year. You can't enter the National Basketball Association draft till you're 19. So the impatient Tyler stupidly signed a 1-year $140,000 (that's thousand, not million) contract with a pro team in Haifa, Israel, so he could polish his skills and raise his profile till he becomes eligible to play in the U.S. Here's the shocker: Tyler's Haifa experiment is going very badly A good crossover dribble is great. Tyler's suck-ups (parents, friends, etc.) should have told him reading is fundamental, 'cause at the rate he's going, he may never make it to the NBA.

The U.S. Army gave a bogus story...at first about the circumstances surrounding the murders committed at Fort Hood recently by Army Maj. Nidal Hasan - everything from who took him down, to whether he'd made any declarations involving his religion, to whether he was alive or not, following the shooting. Why?

Andre Agassi's early-to-mid 1990s power mullet was actually a pelt. I would have written about this sooner, like right after Agassi admitted it in his new book. But the shock was too great for me.

This one falls into the Hell-must-exist-for-people-like-this category: A woman in Texas faked breast cancer, so she could collect donations and use 'em to pay for breast implants. She got the implants.

Carrie Prejean has more sex tapes, eight total. So if the first that she admitted to was "the biggest mistake of (her) life," as she told Sean Hannity on his Fox News Channel show, then where on the sliding scale of mistakes do the other seven tapes fall? Lesson: It's OK to take a moral stance on something, even if your stance is unpopular. If you're really principled, then popularity shouldn't phase you. On the other hand, before you take "principled" stands that involve finger-wagging, news conferences, and making the talk show rounds, you'd better make sure you don't have any closet skeletons that will negate your self-righteousness in the eyes of the general public. That's not caving in to popularity. That's just good sense. BTW, those of you, my friends, who always scold me for allegedly picking on sexually "free" people, leave me alone on this one. I'm not picking on Prejean for loving herself. But you gotta admit it was kind of very stupid to do it on tape, know the tapes were out there, and still go on a media blitz portraying herself as the picture of the new, modern, young "Christian soldier."

This one from the Daily Mail in Britain: Universal Pictures, one of the film companies that frequently distributes to theaters worldwide movies so bad they might cause cancer, has been busted in the UK for deleting the images of African American actors Faison Love and Kali Hawk from promo posters for Couples Retreat. Asked to explain, Universal said it was innocently trying to "simplify" the poster for international audiences. Loosely translated, "simplify" in this context means "remove the scary black people so that our British audiences don't see the posters and get turned off to this film."

I've never been a fearful flier (with literally two exceptions, on which we experienced toss-you-out-of-your-seat turbulence), but more and more when I read stories like this, I'd rather ride a unicycle blindfolded through a maze of bear traps than get on a plane.

A woman from Poland is claiming her daughter was recently impregnated in a situation akin to immaculate conception, so she is suing the place where the apparent miracle took place.

Magdalena Kwiatkowska and her 13-year-old daughter recently vacationed in Egypt. When they returned home, the daughter told Kwiatkowska that she was pregnant. But Kwiatkowska says her daughter didn't meet boys on the trip, so the girl must've been the victim of "stray sperm" in the hotel pool.

That's right. Stray sperm.

I'm not sure whether I think this is an old-fashioned hustle, or if Kwiatkowska is just naive.

Maybe it's neither. But there's no way that kid is carrying Jesus or anything. Possibly the Antichrist.

Whatever. If the mom is right about the cause of her daughter's spermination, I'll never get in a hotel pool again.

Speaking of bodily fluids and swimming pools, when I was a little kid floundering about the neighborhood pool, there was an urban legend - at least I think it was just legend - that if you peed in the swimming pool you'd be caught 'cause there was invisible ink in the water that would have a chemical reaction with the urine, and create a cloud of black or blue ink around you.

If that ink pee thing wasn't legend and Kwiatkowska isn't a total headcase, you'd think they could put something in pools to alert other swimmers to "stray sperm."

I need help with a prejudice, I think. But don't get your shorts in a bunch. I'm not talking "isms." I don't care what color you are, or what party of the globe your ancestors came from. My prejudice isn't that deep. Besides, generally speaking I love everybody, like a rotund kid loves cake.

Almost everybody. Everybody except hippies. I can't explain why I haven't been able to overcome my lifelong disdain of them. But in the past two days I've had two negative hippie encounters, which lead me to believe I need to go to a camp to learn to be at peace with hippies, or something.

I'll tell you what it is, I think: I love the earth, and I love animals too. But every hippie I've ever met, like most political pundits I've met, can't seem to make a point without taking it to a ridiculous extreme, or without coming off as smug and self-righteous. And that, my friends, is a turnoff and never wins anyone over to your point of view.

Case in point: I met this morning's hippie, while sitting at a coffee stand near the Herald, waiting for a source to show up. She sat down across from me, facing me, but at the next table over.

I smiled and said hello and then quickly went back to my paper and my coffee.

That would have been fine. Peaceful. Pleasant.

But then she had to start talking. First, she commented on the I.D. hanging around my neck.

Her: You a journalist?

Me: Yep.

Her: You know about the Illumminati?

Me: I think my grandfather once test drove one.

Her: No, I mean the secret global government that is using the media to take over the world.

Me: Sorry, I was thinking of Maserati.

Her: Well, whether you realize it or not you're probably a part of their plan.

Me: They'd better keep paying me on time, or I'll expose them.

Her: It isn't funny.

Me: I'm sorry, but I don't know you. I didn't mean to offend you. But we went from hello to you telling me I'm helping bring down the world. Tell you what, I'll just finish my coffee.

Silence

Her: Is that coffee fair trade?

Me: I didn't ask.

Her: You should have. Did you know that lots of countries that produce coffee beans force kids into slave labor to make coffee for people like you?

Me: Thirsty, sleepy people?

Her: No, ignorant consumers.

Me: I see. I'm contributing to slavery...maybe. How ironic. I think I'm going to keep sipping and reading.

Her: And some companies that import pre-ground beans accidentally grind up small animals. It can be cruel, you know.

Me: So my coffee has meat in it?

Silence.

Her: Nice suit.

Me: Thanks. Let me guess. A kid named Pavel who lives in a hovel made this suit for 15 cents?

Her: No, just nice suit.

Me: Thank you. Nice t-shirt. I notice you have lots of drawings on it.

Her: Yeah, this one is my protest to the Christians who think they're going to take over the world. Some historical texts suggest that Jesus didn't even exist.

Me: I thought the Illuminati was taking over.

Her: They are, too. And this is one I drew to say death to the Nazis, man. Nazis would have never let us sit here and have this conversation.

Me: True. We probably couldn't have talked. That would have sucked. What's that one about?

This, my friends, is the new director of security at Burnettiquette World Headquarters.

His name should be Dolemite, but for some strange reason Mrs. B is opposed to that. She's also opposed to Black Caesar, Black Belt Jones and Shaft. And since he's a he, he can't be Foxy Brown. I mean, he could be C. Boogie Brown. But Mrs. B is also opposed to that. She calls him Leo. So I guess I'll call him Leo too.

Leo is an 8 month old Black Lab, and in spite of the white streak down his chest they tell us he's a pure lab (not that that matters; we'd have gladly taken a mutt). Apparently, "they" say, some Labs have that streak. The only thing it would prevent is him being shown at dog shows. And that doesn't matter, 'cause I may be a geek, but I don't see myself getting nerded up to that degree and parading around a ring at the Westminster Kennel Club.

So here's Leo's back story: Some of you know that a few weeks ago we lost our awesome, faithful dog, Cheko. He was 14-and-a-half, and might have lived longer had he not succumbed to a vet-prescribed arthritis medication that sent him into a tailspin.

Initially we wanted a dog just like Cheko, a herder. He was a Border Collie and Australian Cattle Dog mix. We wanted either of those breeds or a mix of 'em again, or maybe an Australian Shepherd, or an Aussie mixed with one of those first two breeds. Our logic was simple. They're very intelligent dogs, maybe the most intelligent dogs. And a new one would remind us of Cheko.

But as we searched local animal shelters, and the Humane Society, we found they were tough to come by. So we reached out to rescue farms in other parts of Florida, whose sole purpose is to take in dogs of those specific breeds, nurse 'em back to health, etc., and then adopt 'em out.

Well, we were all set to drive a few hundred miles to get one of these dogs, and Mrs. B - credit where it's due - felt pangs of guilt, because she recalled that Cheko had been rescued. If you don't know that story, you can read it here. Anyway, she correctly reasoned that the dogs at these rescue farms already had good homes. They were pretty much all living in foster homes, and there was zero chance any of them would ever end up in a cage at a crowded shelter somewhere.

Even if it meant missing out on the breed we wanted, Mrs. B argued that it would better honor Cheko's memory if we rescued another dog. So we set aside our breed wish list and went to the local dog pound AKA Miami-Dade County Animal Services. We went there to meet a Golden Retriever stray that we'd seen online. But the retriever's owner had surfaced by the time we arrived. And essentially on the way out, we stumbled across Leo. He's not a herder. But that's OK. He's a cool dog, and he needed a home. And it's clear that whoever surrendered him to the pound took care of him, 'cause even though we just brought him home last night, Leo seems to know how to behave indoors. He's frisky. But that's to be expected. He's still a puppy, really. And look at the size of his paws. He's gonna be huge!

So that's that.

Moving right along, I'll be posting from the road the rest of this week. At the conclusion of business today I'm on the way to Chicago for a conference. If you're in Chicagoland shoot me a note.